Guess what really made ISIS change its communications methods? #hint #notSnowden

Guess what really made ISIS change its communications methods?

by digby

NSA director Admiral Michael Rogers is very upset about media leaks.  He says that it's made ISIS change it's plans and now they are able to kill us all in our beds. Or something like that.

I'll just let this guy's comments speak for me:

Shorter NSA Director Rogers: Trust me, you don't need a free press, or a democracy. We will keep you safe.
— James Risen (@JamesRisen) November 16, 2014

Stop and think about it: The US intelligence community now thinks they have a right to decide what is published by the American press.
— James Risen (@JamesRisen) November 16, 2014

Every dictatorship that cracks down on the press also claims national security. And they use their legal system.
— James Risen (@JamesRisen) November 16, 2014

The message is: Go ahead, Egypt, imprison reporters. Go ahead, Russia, destroy the opposition press.
— James Risen (@JamesRisen) November 16, 2014

Next time some tin pot dictator jails a dissident, read the official reason. Usually its because he is a "threat to state security."
— James Risen (@JamesRisen) November 16, 2014

No, we only "send messages" with bombs, "red lines" and the like. What we actually do in practice is meaningless because everyone knows we're exceptional and not subject to the same rules as everyone else.

It's funny that Admiral Rogers says this though. Because according to this article, the reason ISIS has stopped using its normal modes of communications is because we're bombing the hell out of them:

“The easiest day of the air campaign against ISIS was the first day,” said Christopher Harmer, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War. U.S. pilots knew the locations of ISIS command and control facilities and storage depots, and to an extent the group was taken at least partially by surprise, since it didn’t know the precise time the strikes would begin. “Past that first day or two of easy targets, ISIS predictably dispersed into the civilian population. They quit using high-power radios, satellite and cellphones, starting moving to a dispersed command and control model,” Harmer said.

By the logic of the intelligence community on the Snowden leaks and the treasonous media, bombing ISIS has made us less safe because they stopped using their usual methods of communication in reaction to it.  Infact, the Snowden leaks may have made us safer because it's confused the terrorists to the point where they don't know which side is up:

ISIS members may be harder to track, but on the flip side, persistent U.S. electronic surveillance, as well as overhead monitoring by drones, has constrained the group. “At the end of the day, an intelligence organization [conducting surveillance] forces two choices: Communicate and be at risk, or don’t communicate and fail to coordinate,” said the former U.S. official. “Should I encrypt my communications? Should I use onion routers? Should I use cut-outs?” Those would be the kind of questions this former official said he would ask if he were on the militants’ side.

Onion routers refers to the TOR network, a system that allows users to mask their location and communicate anonymously online. But the number of users connecting from Iraq is low, around 2,000, down from a high of more than 15,000 in June, according to the TOR Project, which helps with the ongoing development the system. Connections from Syria are also down, with only about 2,500 users are connecting from there, the group said. It’s unclear whether ISIS is using the routing system, which has also been used by Syrian rebel groups fighting to overthrow the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.

Some officials seem to understand that this sniveling from the intelligence community about the Snowden leaks and keeping the babies safe is about as convincing as the handwringing coming from Wall Street millionaires who whine about doing God's Work:

Still, others said it was laughable that ISIS was oblivious to the fact that the U.S. tracks terrorists by monitoring their communications. “It’s wrong to say because of Snowden our fight with ISIS is harder,” said one U.S. defense official with extensive experience battling al Qaeda and other militant groups. For more than a decade, intelligence agencies have been using electronic surveillance to locate terrorists, a fact that obviously hasn’t eluded ISIS, he said. “I’m not in any way defending Snowden. But I think our intel agencies need to grow up.”

Even top lawmakers are skeptical that ISIS went to school on U.S. surveillance thanks to Snowden’s leaks.

“There’s certainly knowledge that they’ve changed almost everything they’re doing to avoid being seen, being heard,” Sen. Bob Corker, expected to soon be chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told The Daily Beast. But as to whether there’s any connection to the Snowden leaks, “There’s been no indication,” Corker said. “I just think [even] people who aren’t particularly knowledgeable understand we have extreme capabilities in multiple areas.”

Indeed, researchers who track the militant group note that long before U.S. airstrikes began, the group was employing encryption to protect its communications. If anything, they say, the Snowden disclosures told ISIS not to start using encryption and other obfuscating tools, but to stop talking about the fact that they were.

Oddly, despite Admiral Rogers' thundering about how these wily terrorists have been able to elude the Americans due to the media and Edward Snowden spilling the beans (about mass surveillance of civilians) these people seem to think they are actually going to more traditional methods because of other factors. Imagine that.


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